Ann Smarty, Author at Search Engine People

The Evolution and Expansion of Google’s Featured Snippets

Ann Smarty — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 12:49:00 +0000

A featured snippet is a special way that Google shows off certain results that they feel will be most valuable to the person performing the search. Have you ever searched for a question and had it come up in a box telling you the answer right away? This is a featured box: Featured snippets can [...]

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5 Reasons to Add Structured Data to Your Site

Ann Smarty — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 12:50:09 +0000

Structured data is a way of providing better context for Google, so it can read what is on your page and better understand it. It includes multi-platform supported markup to let you add a lot of important indexable information, often invisible to human users. Structured data first hit the forefront of our collective minds [...]

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Thin Content: How to Diagnose and Fix the Issue

Ann Smarty — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 12:49:50 +0000

"Thin" content is one of the most misused and loose terms in our industry. Whenever there's an inexplicable drop in rankings, a lot of experts are ready to jump in and blame an alleged "thin" or "duplicate" content penalty. On the other hand, whenever Google is willing to confirm an update, they would include "thin [...]

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Google’s Featured Snippets: The Roundup of Most Recent Stats and Studies

Ann Smarty — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 18:12:51 +0000

Featured snippets are comparatively new Google's search feature showing web pages that did the best job answering a user's query in position 0, i.e. on top of organic search results below the ads. Google's Featured Snippets are still volatile (Google keeps working on the algorithm on a regular basis). This means that queries that [...]

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Where Are the Female Influencers?

Ann Smarty — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 13:49:00 +0000

A really interesting study came out from digital marketing firm Collective Bias. They wanted to look at the demographic of female social influencers and how they used different social platforms. Their primary platform of focus, however, was Snapchat, which has been growing in popularity over the last couple of years. What they found was [...]

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How To Win An Influential Blogger To Write For Your Site

Ann Smarty — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 12:49:00 +0000

I am a pretty prolific writer online. My work has ended up on dozens of sites over the years, including some big names. On the other hand, I have also had some incredible, influential bloggers writing for my site, or participating in other content I have created. With both side of the coin, I [...]

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How Color Affects Conversions

Ann Smarty — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 12:49:00 +0000

Next time you walk into a store take special care to notice your surroundings. How air conditioned is the space? What music are they playing and at what volume? Are there any unusual scents in the air you might not expect, such as desserts coming from a department store where no food is being [...]

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How Effective is Content Marketing, As Shown Through Stats

Ann Smarty — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 12:49:39 +0000

As soon as a business enters the digital marketing world, all they hear is "Content is king." So they jump into bandwagon without much strategy in mind. But is it really so? Is content king no matter what? I have a bit different stance on that: I say "Content is the foundation". It's not [...]

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Site Speed: Ranking Factor or Not? Everything Googlers Ever Said about Site Speed

Ann Smarty — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 12:54:00 +0000

Google has been talking about site speed for ages. They have been working hard to encourage webmasters to make their sites faster. To better understand where we started and what is going on today, I have created a helpful timeline summarizing what Googlers have been saying about site speed: Official: Ranking Signal In April [...]

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How To Measure The Success Of Your Guest Post

Ann Smarty — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 14:55:00 +0000

Guest posting has numerous benefits, from authority building to actual lead generation. Going after one (more tangible) of the goals diminishes the value of guest blogging: You just cannot underestimate the power of a well-established brand! But how do you measure the success of each individual guest post as well as guest posting campaign as [...]

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